The Delaware plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 74° in 2022.
Delaware’s center stands about 750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Delaware reaches Lake Huron by way of Benhke Creek: about 5 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Delaware; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Delaware has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Delaware normally reaches 46° and falls to 32°. The record high is 69°, in 1909; the record low 10°, in 1900. The most rain on this date, 1.42 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Harbor Beach 1 SSE, 13 miles north, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
